Changing the world with Global Goals

It’s a big question, but one that Piers Bradford actually knows the answer to, thanks largely to his work with Project Everyone.

Speaking at the PrettyGreen The Clearing event a few weeks ago, he shared his story…

So, what is Project Everyone?

Well, it was set up by Richard Curtis (yep, the chap who made Love Actually and devised Comic Relief who knows a thing or two about making people feel feelings) and operates with a mission to continue the work of the 193 countries who signed up to the Millennium Development Goals in 2000.

These goals were the work of world leaders and the UN, who came together to help end world poverty and take steps towards reducing the number of deaths caused by Malaria and HIV.

By the end of 2015, they were half way there.

Sadly, halfway isn’t good enough (think about it… would Usain Bolt stop at 50 metres?), so Project Everyone was set up to continue the work and make people care, with an aim of reaching 6bn people and telling them what the goals are. The rationale being that if enough people knew about them, they might just help.

The audience was rapt as they listened to Piers but an unspoken question was poised above each head… how do you go about getting that volume of people to first of all see something and second of all (and perhaps most importantly) care?

Well, it turns out that the answer lies in finding an emotional connection.

With this in mind, the team sat in a room and wrote out everything that people cared about. The list was long, spanning everything from sports and education to religion.

There were a lot of tactics at play but Piers took us through a few examples of a few rules they followed to generate awareness…

1) Make it easy to identify

Aware of the significance emojis and visuals now take in global communication; the goals were quickly turned into icons that could be instantly identified worldwide. From there, they were projected onto the New York skyline – instantly reaching a huge audience.

2) Make people laugh

Viral is a bit of a buzzword, but there’s no doubt that when content does go viral, people see it, share it and do it By pulling in favours, the team made a video called Dizzy Goals – challenging the world’s best footballers to take a penalty after spinning around. From Gareth Bale to Theo Walcott, Dizzy Goals is now a recognised challenge, which has been taken on by the general public as well as professionals and thanks to its name, is intrinsically linked to the Global Goals project.

3) Pull in favours

The power of celebrity can be awe-inspiring. Securing Coldplay’s Chris Martin to curate an annual concert to raise money was a no-brainer. As was getting Bono involved. And Liam Neeson. And Michelle Rodriguez.

4) Don’t make it all about doing good

Some people gloss over charity pleas; it’s just the nature of the game. Finding ways to navigate this was key. Sponsoring Liverpool FC enabled the team to use the incredible global reach of football to generate awareness of the project with a completely new audience.

Piers’ talk was inspiring and motivating, but one of the things that stuck with us most is the fact that the principles his team applied launching and maintaining nose around Project Everyone are exactly the same things that we talk about in brainstorms and briefings – what’s the thing we want people to feel and what stories do we need to create in order to reach them?

It’s easy to lose sight of the simple art of story telling and sweating your assets, but as Piers’ talk proves – no matter the scale of the activity, the basic principles remain the same. Agree what you want people to know and find engaging ways to tell them.